Make or break week for Peters

By AUDREY YOUNG

Winston Peters has five days to fight for his political life. He and New Zealand First are on a knife-edge between annihilation and a respectable showing of about six MPs.

Under the vagaries of MMP, a few thousand votes on Saturday could spell the difference.

If his party does not win an electorate seat and fails to make 5 per cent, it will be out of the next Parliament.

Its only two seats, Tauranga and Te Tai Tonga, looked safe at the start of the campaign. But no longer.

National's Katherine O'Regan has closed the gap on Mr Peters in Tauranga. She was on 32 per cent and the NZ First leader on 31 in a One Network News-Colmar Brunton poll 10 days ago.

And a Marae-DigiPoll survey yesterday shows a virtual neck-and-neck race in Te Tai Tonga between Tutekawa Wyllie and Labour's low-profile Mahara Okeroa.

That spells danger when combined with NZ First's 4.8 per cent party support in last week's Herald-DigiPoll survey.

NZ First's only other possible lifeline could be a Brian Donnelly win in Whangarei, where Mr Peters is headed tomorrow for a rally.

Mr Peters' healthy lead in his Tauranga seat in September has been pared back by National's aggressive campaign.

A visit to Greerton Village school twilight gala last week also gives a clue why he could be in trouble.

He greeted the principal of three years, Greg Stuart: "Good to see you again."

Mr Stuart later told the Herald he could not recall having met the MP before and had not seen him at the school since he had been principal.

He had, however, met Katherine O'Regan at a meeting she called earlier in the year of all school principals.

Mr Peters is not willing to contemplate that he might face a close contest in Tauranga or that his political days might be numbered.

"We're going to shock you all on election night."